The wall TV had various features to engage the viewer. Scripts for shows were available, allowing the viewer to actually act as a part of the TV story. They had overwhelming sound systems built-in. The parlour, though, was not for everyone; Montag's friend Faber does not use them.

"My wife says books aren't 'real.'"

"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed
in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with
all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlors. As you see, my parlour is nothing but four plaster walls. And here " He held out two small rubber plugs. "For my ears when I ride the
subway-jets."

People who do not remember television from the 1950's may not appreciate what an incredible insight this is. The first public demonstrations of color TV had occurred only three years earlier. Here's some ad copy from one of the hottest sellers in 1950 - the Philco:

It's a remarkable jump from this tiny screen (imagine the picture and sound quality) to a wall-sized screen that dominated the room.

The characters on the screen were modified slightly at each location to correctly appear to call the home viewer by name (see spot-wavex converter).

For the old-fashioned alternative to parlour walls, see what Bradbury had to say about books:

Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us...

Do you know why books such as this are so important? ...The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

So now do you see why books are hated and feared, they show the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon phases, or less, hairless, expressionless. We're living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.